F 74 
.S89 
S86 
Copy 1 



1702 1902 



The 



Two Hundredth Anniversary 



of the 



First Parish Church 



of 



Stow 



Massachusetts 



Sermons by 
REV. J. SIDNEY MOULTON, Pastor 

and 

SAMUEL COLLINS BEANE, D.D. 



July 27, 1902 



sSyv ^ ^^^***^ 



<»^(^^^»^^<»^>»< 




First parish i xitariax church, stow, mass. 



THE HOME-COMING AT STOW. 



THE first' settlers of this town organized a Church vSociety 
which now, after a life of two centuries, has a firm hold 
upon their descendants. On July 27, a commemorative 
service was held, with many friends from neighboring towns and 
societies present. The church was well decorated with cut 
flowers and plants in honor of the event that had called them 
together. The Reception Committee, of which Mrs. F. W. Warren 
was Chairman, did well their part to make the social side a success, 
and many old friendships were renewed upon a formal introduction. 

Those who took part in the services held morning and evening 
were as follows : Rev. J. vS. Moulton, Pastor ; Samuel C. Beane, 
D.D., of Newburyport; Rev. J. P. vSheafe, of Harvard ; Rev. J. N. 
Pardee, of Bolton; Rev. C. H. Washburn, of Mayuard ; Rev. J. R. 
Cushiug, of Gleasondale; Rev. E. F. Hayward,of Marlboro; Rev. 
J. Baltzby, of Hudson ; and Mr. W. H. Clark, of Stow. 

The music was under the direction of Mr. W. A. Wood, Chorister, 
and Miss Bertha F. Lawrence, Organist, with the following pro- 
gram : — 

Morning. Organ voluntary. Sentences. Original hymn. Re- 
sponsive reading. Anthem, " The King of Glory Shall Come in." 
Prayer. Response, Choir. Scripture lesson. Anthem, " Great is 
the Lord." Sermon, Samuel C. Beane, D.D., on the "Religious 
Nurture and Progress of New England during the last Two Hundred 
Years, as seen in the Liberal Congregational Church of Stow." 
Hymn, " The House Our Fathers Built to God." Benediction. 

Evening. Organ voluntary. Anthem, " Sing Unto God." Scrip- 
ture reading, Rev. J. P. Sheafe. Response, Choir. Addresses: Rev. 
J. Baltzby, "Religious Gains"; Mr. W. H. Clark, "What the 
Church stands for To-day" ; Rev. E. F. Hayward, " The Unitarian 
Church of To-day " ; Rev. J. R. Cushing, " The Methodist Church 
of To-day. Anthem, " God of Our Fathers." Addresses: Rev. C. H. 
Washburn, " The Orthodox Church of To-day " ; Rev. J. N. Pardee, 
" The Outlook for the Country Church " ; Rev. J. P. Sheafe, " The 
Church of To-morrow." Summary and benediction, Samuel C. 
Beane, D.D. 

This was an event long to be remembered in the annals of the 
vSocietv. 



TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 



CHRONOLOGICAL PAGE. 



Town of Stow incorporated, May i6 

First Meeting-House erected .... 

Church organized, under Rev. J. Eveleth 

Second Meeting-House erected 

Third Meeting-House erected 

Fourth Meeting-Hoiise erected 

Sunday-vSchool organized, June 6 . 

Stoves put into Meeting-House entry 

Bell presented by Mrs. Abigail Eveleth 

Church becomes Unitarian .... 

Organized as the First Parish 

Reorganized, under Rev. W. H. Kinsley 

Fourth Church burned, Nov. 9 . . . 

Fifth Church (present house) erected . 

Tower-clock presented by Mrs. Hale and Mrs. \\ 

Parsonage presented by Col. Elijah Hale 

New Organ provided b}^ subscription 

Last Covenant adopted ..... 

Two Hundredth Anniversary, July 27 . 





1683 




1686 




1702 




1713 




1752 




1827 




1830 




1832 




1832 




1833 




1834 




1840 




1847 




1848 


hitney 


1869 




1870 




1892 




1895 




1902 



Notes. 

The bell, presented in 1832 by Mrs. Abigail Eveleth, widow of the 
Rev. J. Eveleth, was tolled for the first time on the occasion of her 
funeral, a few days after being put in place. In the fire of 1847 it 
fell and was cracked, bxit was recast and now hangs in the belfry. 

The first meeting-house stood at what is now called the Lower 
Village. The second one north of " Strong Water Brook," or near 
the present residence of Mrs. F. W. Warren. The third one near 
the site of the Center School. The fourth was erected upon the 
site of the present church building. 



IflRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 



LIST OF MINISTERS AND PERIODS OF SERVICE. 



Rev. John Eveleth 

Rev. John Gardner 

Rev. Jonathan Newell 

Rev. James Kendall 

Rev. Mr. Chickering . 

Rev. John L. vSiblev 

Rev. Jonathan Farr 

Rev. Matthew Harding 

Rev. William H. Kinsley 

Rev. Reuben Bates 

Rev. George F. Clark 

Rev. F, W. Webber 

Rev. John F. Locke 

Rev. David P. Muzzv 

Rev. Mr. Dyer 

Rev. Thomas Weston 

Rev. J. Sidney Moulton (present Pastor) 



1701-1718 

1718-1775 

1775-1828 

1828 

1828-1829 

1829-1833. 1835 

1836 

■ • 1837 

I 840- I 846 

1846-1859 

1862-1867 

1869-1870 

1870-1872 

1872-1876 

. 1877 

1878-1885 

. 1885 



TO ESTABLISH A FUND. 

As has been suggested at these meetings, an effort is being made 
to create a fund whereby the support and repairs of this Church 
may be assured. It is hoped that the friends of the Society, 
although they may have left the town, will not forget that it stands 
in need of their financial aid and assistance, and that what encour- 
agement they can now offer may renew the life of the Society and 
keep afresh the interest that has been theirs for so many years. 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 



SERMON BY REV. J. S. MOULTON, PASTOR. 

Delivered Sunday, July 20, 1902. 



" God, cC'/w at sintdry times and in divers maiiiiers spake in times 
past unto t tie fat tiers liy tfie propliets liatli in tfiese tast days spoken 
unto ns tn' tiis Son, ivtiom lie Iiatli appointed lieir of all tilings. 

HEB. I. I, 2. 

Historical. 

These words suggest a theme which is both interesting and 
profitable — that is, the continuance of faith — the fact that through 
manifold changes of form and after many years, that faith in God, 
once planted in the soul, is found there still — a song in the heart 
of humanity which never dies. 

I shall, however, speak of this theme only incidentalh'. My 
piirpose to-day is quite other. 

I do not wish to trench upon ground which may be covered bj- 
Doctor Beane next vSunday, nor would I anticipate anything which 
may be said by other speakers ; but I should like, since we shall 
have no paper dealing specifically with our local history, to recall, 
a few of the salient points — a few interesting facts — concerning 
the two hundred years which now look down upon us as a religious 
society. I shall say nothing not well known to the older ones of 
us, but the younger generations may not be familiar with the story 
of our past. 

To the men and women who founded this society two centuries 
ago, religion was a profound realit^^ It underlaj- everything they 
did. They lived constantly in the thought of God. It was a con- 
dition imposed bj- the General Coixrt in granting permission to 
form a township of Stow that there shotild be ten families who 
shoiild be "of good and honest conversation and Orthodox in 
religion " and that " a pious. Orthodox and able minister be main- 
tained here." Only such as were sound in the faith coiild have 
land granted them within the new town. So did Stow guarantee 
the qiialit}^ of its first settlers. 

For nearly twenty j^ears this chosen people sought for " a pioiis. 
Orthodox and able minister " to dwell among them ; but onlv after 
seven failures to secure a man did the eighth man — the Rev. John 



8 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OE THE 

Eveletli — decide to remain. For seventeen years Mr. Eveleth 
ministered — let us hope successfiilly — to the needs of his people ; 
and it was during his ministry — though not for two or three 3'ears 
after his coming (in 1699 or 1700) — that a church was regularly 
organized and a creed or covenant, now unfortunately lost, was 
adopted. Since that time, now two hundred years ago, there has 
been no break, no lack of continuity in the life of the church, 
nor has it been for any length of time without either its settled 
minister or its regular supply. This is interesting and unusual — 
that for so long a time there should be no continued break in the 
services of the society. 

I find upon the church records the names of seventeen ministers 
who have served the society for longer or shorter periods of time. 
Of these, four seem to have been supplies and to have remained 
only about one year (or less) each. Three others seem not to have 
been ordained or installed here and hence not to have been full 
pastors but only " the hired servants " of the society. 

If we deduct these seven names there will remain for the ten 
installed pastors an average service of twenty years each. Even 
the seventeen men would have an average pastorate of nearly twelve 
years each. This is unusual — for modern pastorates are very 
short. And the longer pastorates here show well the character 
and habit of the church — the stability of its aim and purpose. 

But it is a matter of much greater interest, that of the entire 
period of two hundred years, Dwre than half by eleven years was 
covered by the ministry of two men — the Rev. John Gardner serv- 
ing fifty-seven years and Rev. Jonathan Newell fifty-four j^ears. 

I like to think of those years and what they must have meant. 
I like to think of the beautiful thing it was to see tiuo men giving 
the best of their lives to the service of their people ; I like to 
think of the deepening love, the close growing together of the 
hearts of pastor and people till it became almost a better thing just 
to see these men about the streets and to feel sure of their interest 
and sympathy in all the deepest and best life of the community — 
almost a better thing that — I say — than to hear other men preach, 
— their very presence being a benediction. 

I cannot say of course what a lengthening ministry may mean 
to the people. I know only the minister's side. But I am sure that 
for hi)n each added year means deeper interest, means growing 
more and more into the lives of the people and the interests of the 
communit}' till whatever concerns his people becomes to the 



JflRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 9 

pastor almost a personal matter and an occasion for personal joy 
or personal sorrow. I cannot understand how any man can stand 
with a people year after year, can come close to them in their trials 
and their joys, come to know their life experiences and the history 
of their children and their children's children and not come to feel 
a closeness to them and an interest in them which is almost pater- 
nal. That is one advantage which early times had over to-day. 
Then the influence of the ministry was not jiist a touch-and-go 
influence — a merely transcient force. It reached down to the roots 
of the life and was a power for good, ever deepening because it was 
founded upon intimate knowledge. 

Then, too, an added reason for long pastorates — for the first 
twenty-five years of his ministry every man flounders, blunders, 
makes mistakes, sometimes serious ones, which can be corrected or 
outgrown only with the years. We ministers at first are very like 
Elihu in Job's ancient parable — full of the conceit of youth and 
ignorance. We are apt to begin our work with the conviction that 
if only we can get a hearing we can convert the race. At twenty- 
one we are most of us (ministers) ready to attempt to run the uni- 
verse, with the inevitable result that we do nothing well. Onlj^ 
with years and experience does wisdom come. And so I say I feel 
sure that these long pastorates of half a century and more must 
have been rich in gracious influences. 

Of course, not all these two hundred years have been years of 
undisturbed serenity, though we seem not to have had such serioiis 
difficulties as some had. But not even law can compel men to 
think alike. Differences began early to appear. Lil)eral thought 
crept in and spread with alarming rapidity. Trouble first arose 
with the Universalists. These believers began to "sign off" and 
withdraw to churches in other towns. By the year 1830 these Uni- 
versalists had become so numerous that a society of that faith was 
formed here, which lived for twenty years. Natiirally, the rela- 
tions with the mother church were never very cordial. 

A little later an open rupture came, and the old church itself 
passed over to a more liberal faith or mode of thought. Channing's 
influence had proved potent. It resulted in many church divi- 
sions, as you know. This church was no exception. Mr. John 
Sibley was the last pastor called and settled by the town, and dur- 
ing his ministry the break came. 

"In 1833," say the records, "the First Parish was organized, 
embracing all who had not withdrawn from the old church and 



10 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OE THE 

who were know as Unitarians.''^ That is, up to this date we had 
been an Orthodox Congregational church. In 1833 we became a 
Unitarian Congregational church, and Mr. Sibley, dismissed from 
pastorate of the "Congregational Church and Society in Stow" 
(1833), returned two years later as pastor of the "First Parish 
(Unitarian) of Stow." 

The transition appears to have been effected with uivich less diffi- 
cultj^ than in many cases, though a delay of some months occurred 
in organizing the First Parish. 

It would be pleasant, did time allow, to trace the growing liberal, 
ity of thought through these two hundred years, but that will prob- 
ably be done next Sunday. Suffice it now to say that five different 
covenants or statements of faith have been used by the church. 
The two earliest of these have been lost, iiufortunately. The 
third, in use in 1829 — when Mr. Sibley first came — and still found 
upon our records, is in the form not of a creed but of an agreement 
or bond of union, in which the candidate for admission to the 
church publicly gave himself " to God, the Father, to Jesiis Christ, 
the Savior, and to the enlightening influence of the Holj^ Spirit, in 
a luost solemn covenant, never, never to be forgotten." The scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments were acknowledged to be " the 
foundation of faith and the guide to life." Beyond this there is no 
dogmatic statement, but those who enter into this covenant agree 
"to watch over each other in brotherly love." Some years after 
the division came, and when the " First Parish " had been organ- 
ized as avowedly Unitarian some seven years, a new " Expression 
of Faith " was adopted (in 1740), under the leadership of Rev. Mr. 
Kinsley, then pastor. 

This was more of a creed and reads: " We believe in the Divine 
Authenticity of the Bible and agree to live in all respects as God 
shall therein reveal himself to us." This broad and undogmatic 
statement of faith and purpose stood unaltered until some seven 
years ago (in 1895), when b}^ vote, as you remember, we adopted 
what may be a no better but only a more modern form of state- 
ment, namely this: "Believing with Jesus, that true religion is 
summed iip in love to God and love to man, we of this church, in 
the faith, freedom, and fellowship of the Gospel, unite for the 
worship of God and the service of man." Under this statement 
seven new members then united with the church — the last, I 
think, who have done so. It will thus appear that a broad and 
liberal spirit, which insisted verj' little upon dogmatic tests, has 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 11 

from early days characterized this First Church of Stow, whether 
in its Orthodox or its Unitarian form. 

This chnrch has experienced in its life the vicissitudes through 
which many a church, in country regions at least, has passed. It 
has known many changes. It has had five houses of worship — 
we are now occupying the fifth. It has seen the people change. 
It has witnessed, and especially in recent years, its congregations 
dwindle, its pews grow vacant, its attendants pass away and 
their places not made good. In the records of Mr. Muzzy — 
no more than thirty j^ears ago — I read often such entries as 
these: "Preached to-day to one hundred and twenty-one peo- 
ple"; or "Preached to one hundred and thirtj^ people"; or, 
it may be, "one hundred and seven people"; or sometimes, 
" eighty-four." Rarely does the record drop below sixty, 
though I do find a few entries which seem more familiar, as, 
" Preached to-day to thirty-seven people, but the day was warm " ; 
or, " Preached to twenty-four people, and the Sundaj'-school was 
omitted. It has proved a stormy day." From various causes the 
congregations have grown small till to-day sixty to sixty-five is a 
good number, and it is only upon special occasions that we rise to 
one hundred or more. If this were peculiar to ourselves it would 
be cause for immediate consideration and concern ; but it is not 
peculiar to us. It is rather a general condition in which many — 
perhaps most churches — at present share. The causes for it are 
varied. 

With waning numbers ha^•e come, also, to us as to others, waning 
resources. Salaries have grown small as numbers have diminished ; 
pecuniary assets are not large to-day. Yet in spite of many dis- 
couragements this little church has sturdily held its way and 
gone on in faith and hope. God grant it ma}^ do so yet for many 
a year ! I rejoice that never yet have we been obliged to ask aid 
of our parent association (the A. U. A.). I trust we may not have 
to do so. There is no cause for immediate disheartenment if we 
are in earnest. There are iipon the list of those to-day more or 
less closely connected with this church, including only those who 
would naturally come here for a service if one were needed — only 
those upon whom the pastor feels at liberty to call, some sixty-two 
or sixty-three families. Surel}' a society with sixtj' families need 
not die unless it will. We do not propose to do so yet. 

What the future may hold, and whether our children and their 
children will observe here the three hundredth anniversarv, I do 



12 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

not know. I do not care to predict. Let us rather now be grateful 
for the past and try to get into the spirit of that past. 

Let lis try to think back two hundred years and think what it 
means to have two hundred j'ears of history looking down upon us. 
I confess I like to get into the spirit of those years. I like to feel 
their influence ; I like to feel as I stand here, week by week, that 
I am not dealing with an institution of a day — a merely transient 
force. I like to feel that I have behind me a record of such noble 
devotion. For two full centuries now the voice of prayer and 
praise has gone wp to God from this little hamlet. For two full 
centuries men and women have here met the Father face to face 
in life's profoundest experiences. Here have thej- brought their 
trials, sorrows, joys, thanksgivings. Here have they wrestled with 
temptation and disheartenment and here won the victory. Here 
have they married and given in marriage ; here have they brought 
their dead ; here for two hundred years have they consecrated 
themselves and their children to life's noblest purposes ; and here 
have they somehow found help in their need and strength to do the 
Divine will. Here have they left a grand record of fidelity. I like 
to recall all this. I like to think of the congregations that gath- 
ered here of old, — of those who may to-daj^ fill our seemingly 
empty pews with an invisible congregation, crowding our little 
house to overflowing with an unseen, immortal presence. Who 
wovild dare say this may not be true ? 

This is not the time to mention names — but we all know them — 
the names of those who have worshiped here and have left a 
record of noble consecration and fidelity. 

And there are manj^ whom no preacher of to-day can name, but 
whom you know and whose names are written iipon your hearts in 
characters of loyalty and love. Is it nothing to feel their presence 
as you gather here in this church which was your father's and 3^our 
father's father's church, as it is yours? Is it nothing to belong to 
this line of descent ? Is it nothing to come into the inheritance 
of their spirit and to feel, it may be, the mantle of that spirit de- 
scending upon us ? 

Would, indeed, that upon this occasion of our Two Hiindredth 
Anniversary we might do souiethiiig to show our appreciation of 
our precious inheritance — something to show fittingly our love 
for the little First Church of Stow, now two centuries old. 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 13 

" Loug may the ancient nieetiug-house 
Rise frotn the village green, 
And over all the country round 
Its helfried tower be seen. 

Still may the call to praise and prayer 

Be heard each Sunday morn, 
And bind in growing faith the past 

With ages yet unborn." 



(Notes Not Included in Sermon.) 

After the old church became Unitarian several attempts were 
made to establish an Orthodox chiirch, but without miich success. 
In 1839 a chvirch was started, which lasted a few years and had two 
ministers. But in 1852 so many withdrew to the church in May- 
nard that the Orthodox church here died. The movement for a 
stricter church was revived again some seven years ago, wdien the 
"Union Chapel" was established by Rev. Mr. Corless (Baptist) 
and others. This "Chapel" is still flourishing, the predominant 
element being probably the Baptist influence. 

The Methodist chttrch in Gleasondale is the child of the church 
in Marlboro. 

The first society and house of worship was at " Gospel Hill," 
now in Hudson. The church and society was transferred to " Rock 
Bottom " in 1855. Although not an offshoot of the First Parish it 
took awa}' some families who formerly worshiped here. 



DISCOURSE BY SAMUEL COLLINS BEANE, D. D. 

Delivered Sunday, July 27, 1902. 



JFe are not children of the bondivouian, hut of the fire. — Gai^a- 
TiANS IV. 31. 

In the early days of the seventeenth century a little company of 
men and women in Scrooby, England, one of a small number of 
similar groups, had separated themselves from the national church 
in which they had been brought up, and as a band of Christian 
disciples on their own account and in their own way were worship- 
ing at private houses, as the early Christians did. This they did 
in departiire from what they deemed to be the errors, moral evils, 
and spiritual oppressions practised by the mother church, in which 
they would have no share. In doing this they defied the law, and 
imperilled their liberty, their property, and their very lives for 
conviction's sake. 

In 1608 most of them resolved to flee from the despotic spiritual 
guardianship of their native England, and after great hindrance 
from the law-officers, escaped into Holland, where, under a liberal 
government, and among appreciative Christian friends, they re. 
mained for about twelve years. Then seeking a larger and more 
independent career, one hundred and two souls of their company, 
nearly all of them young or of middle age, set sail for the Dutch 
settlements near the mouth of the Hudson river ; but either from 
stress of wind and tide, or by the treachery of the commander of 
their little vessel, they found themselves landed on Cape Cod, and 
shortly began a settlement at Plymouth. Here they planted again 
the church which they had organized in England, and maintained 
in Holland, and it endtires and flourishes to this day — popularly 
known now as the Unitarian Church of Plymouth. We gratefullj^ 
name these immigrants, the Pilgrim Fathers. 

Turn to another religious group. The Puritans, with Endicott, 
who settled Salem eight years later, had not, like those Mayflower 
people, severed themselves from the state-church of the mother 
land ; nevertheless, on reaching the Massachusetts shore, they 
organized independently after the pattern of their Plymouth 
brethren. From these two churches has sprung every Congrega- 



16 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

tional church or society on this side of the Atlantic, whether now 
known as Unitarian or Trinitarian. Vastly more than this. If I 
read history aright, it is from the pattern and genius of these two 
small churches in the New England wilderness that has sprung our 
republic itself — the rule of the people in things spiritual being 
simply and naturally transformed into the rule of the people in 
things civil and political. It is at least significant that Thomas 
Jefferson in Virginia and the Reverend Jonathan Mayhew in Boston 
each first saw the possibility and desirability of a civil government 
in America, of and by the people, from observing the workings of 
a church of the Congregational polity. 

What, then, was the early church of New England, the type and 
seed of so much that we now hold dear and indispensable ? 

It was a church of the people. The people were the entire sum 
of its existence — no pope, no bishop, no priest, no parliament to 
legislate, no council to decree. It had no appointed prayers, no 
prescribed ritual. Its minister was simply a man chosen by the 
people of the church in free meeting, to be, for the time, their 
preacher and teacher. He was a minister only by their creation ; 
and when he ceased to perform for them his appointed functions, 
he ceased to be a minister, unless, or until, some other congrega- 
tion took him up and made a minister of him again. He was the 
people's minister, a servant and not a reetor, or ruler, as the 
English church called, and still calls, its priests. 

Each church was independent. When at the ordination of the 
first ministers at vSalem, Plj^mouth was represented by a delegation 
to express S3^mpathy and brotherhood, the delegates claimed no 
authority even to advise, and the vSaleni Christians would have 
resented such advice unasked. 

Such, in brief, were the churches of these New England colonies 
in the first half of the seventeenth century. W^hat, then, was the 
fundamental principle of a New England church in those primitive 
years? It is stated in its full meaning by John Robinson, the 
pastor of the Pilgrims : "In the gathering of a church," he says, 
" I do tell you, that, in what place soever, whether hy preaching 
the Gospel by a true minister, by a false minister, by no minister, 
or by reading and conference, or by any other means of publishing 
it, two or three faithful people do arise, separating themselves 
from the world into the fellowship of the Gospel, they are a church 
truly gathered." Again, Robert Browne, the reputed spiritual 
father of Congregationalism, writes: "Nor are ministers, or their 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 17 

power, necessary to the first gathering of a church . . . but 
the power is in ourselves immediatel}'." 

Let us now turn to the covenants of the early New England 
churches, of which those of Plymouth and Salem are clear ex- 
amples. And here let nie say that there was, in no church, a form- 
ulated creed, there were no listed doctrines ; simply religious 
agreements or pledges, often of one or two sentences only. Omit- 
ting the unimportant parts, the Plymouth church covenant ran 
thus: "We, the Lord's free people, join ourselves . . . into a 
chiirch estate in the fellowship of the Gospel, to walk in all His 
ways made known to us, or to be made known to us, according to 
our best endeavor." Notice not more its brevity and its singleness 
of purpose, than its breadth and progressive outlook — ^ " to walk 
in all His ways, made known to us, or to be made known to us." 
They had not yet attained. They were still learners. They did 
not venture on a formulated and finished creed. 

The Salem covenant of 1629 is even briefer, while it is similarly 
broad and undogmatic : " We covenant with the Lord and with one 
another, and do bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk 
together in all his waj^s, according as he is pleased to reveal him- 
self in his blessed word of truth." This was all. 

Who of us to-day could not bind ourselves bj^ such covenants, and 
stand on such platforms, without bondage and without misgiving? 

Those people had had a surfeit of priesthood, of councils, of 
magnates meddling with their spiritual concerns. Henceforth the 
people, "the Lord's free people," were themselves, under God, to 
rule in the church, nay more, to constitute the church, and to be 
the whole of it. 

To be sure there was less diversity of theological belief than 
manifests itself in our time, but it seems to have been the sincere 
piirpose of these long tormented people to join the whole religious 
community together in one devout and peaceful fold. The Salem 
covenant, says William Bentley, the distinguished scholar and his- 
torian, " never could be intended so much to display opinions, as 
by written obligation to fasten men together." 

But, as time went on, the spirit of Christian unity, that like a 
magnet drew all together at first, began slowly to weaken. With 
the growth of communities different beliefs and various tastes arose. 
As the Puritans, by lapse of time, forgot in a measure the suffer- 
ings they and their fathers had undergone for liberty's sake, the 
enthusiasm for liberty cooled down, and the ideas of libertv became 



18 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OE THE 

confused. As early as 1650 one and another church had, chiefly 
for the instruction of the young, devised certain statements of doc- 
trines. After a while one and another church began to use these 
statements as tests of membership and fellowship. This was the 
little rift which years afterwards resulted in the disruption of so 
many chiirches, and the lamentable bitterness of sectarianism from 
which we suffer even in our day. 

That all this dividing apart on theological opinions was con- 
trary to the original Congregational idea of an inclusive church of 
which all the religious people should be members and rulers 
together, I need not take time to show. Just as, long afterward, 
the unity of the American people in the love of freedom, as 
declared in the Declaration of National Independence, grew less 
strong by increase of sectional interests and debate over political 
dogmas, resulting at length in secession and the Civil War, so in 
that earlier time the unifying spirit and principle of Congrega- 
tionalism, which is simply democracy and independence in the 
church, yielded to the narrowness of theological tenets and the 
hateful rivalries of sect and creed. 

By the time the church in Stow was organized this dogmatic 
and disuniting spirit had received a strong and sad momentum, 
chiefly from certain ministers who prided themselves on their 
" sacred scholarship" and theological acumen, and grew arrogant 
in the assertion of them. The church in Stow was founded ten 
years after the witchcraft trials and executions in Salem, in which 
certain autocratic ministers had acted so direful a part. There had 
come to be a morbid and feverish desire to hunt up everything 
which by a passage of Scripture could be put under condemnation 
or suspicion. The Old Testament command " Thou shalt not suffer 
a witch to live," just suited the existing mental mood, and twenty 
good men and women were execiited in that one year, 1692, at 
Salem. 

The first covenant of the church in Stow, if it could be found, 
would doubtless show considerable of that same spirit which in its 
darkness and severity had so recently sent a score of worthy Chris- 
tians to their death for no actual sin or fault whatever, and on evi- 
dence as abs^ird as ever convulsed the listeners at a mock trial. 

It is a fact of singular interest to you and me to-day that the 
Rev. Samuel Parris, who, before the organization of this church 
had been employed for a short time as preacher by the people of 
Stow, became afterwards the pastor at vSalem Village, now Danvers, 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 19 

where, iu 1692, he took the lead in the prosecution and putting to 
death of what are known in history as the Salem witches. It is 
his name that occiirs so often and luridly in the records of those 
trials which are still preserved. And it is of additional interest to 
us to-day that five years after that melancholy event iu which he 
had taken so leading and tragic a part he was recalled by the 
people of Stow to be their minister again, and for a short time 
resumed his ministerial services here. Evidently his participation 
and leadership in the Salem affair did not lower him seriousl3^ 
if at all, in the minds of the Stow people of that time ! Had that 
stiperstitious mania mastered Mr. Parris during one of his two 
short residences here, rather than, as it happened, between the 
two, then it is likely that some of your ancestors of this town 
woiild have fallen victims to his blind crediility and unrelenting 
will, and Stow, not Salem, would have had the world-wide notori- 
ety of the witchcraft tragedies. 

Now, just as surely as religion becomes cruel or unlovely, its 
power and influence begin to be undermined. Never was Eng- 
land more unreligious than at the time, or shortly following the 
time, when she was inflicting threat and torment upon the fviture 
fathers of New England for their style and conscience of worship. 
At that day, in the English church, a well-behaved and sober- 
minded priest was an exception. Never, again, has New England 
been so unreligious as during the period that soon followed the 
priestly rule of Cotton Mather, aided by colleagues like Samuel 
Parris and Nicholas No3'es. The bigotry and stern wilfulness of 
prominent members of the clergy resulted in alienating many 
of the people from the church and its ministers. That period, 
embracing about the first forty years of the seventeen-hundreds, 
has been characterized in common speech as the period of the 
" Great Declension." During that time it would seem as if a large 
number of the Massachusetts chiirches would have gone out of 
existence had they not been supported by town taxation under 
compiilsory laws, with the sheriff at their back. On the present 
voluntary system probably not one in three of them would have 
survived to tell the storj'. Many of the people were beginning, 
under sharp provocation, to use their reason. They were getting 
weary of priestly rule and autocratic creed-making. Many who did 
not doubt the reality of wntchcraft in the world still believed that 
the evidence in the vSalem cases had its origin largely in personal 
spite, and that the animus of the affair had been cruel and out- 



20 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERvSARY OF THE 

rageous. Piety had come to be at a low ebb. The reaction from 
the old order was terrible. Many of the churches were well nigh 
abandoned. Nor were there then any voices of great believers and 
prophets to rouse the people in their spiritual natures. 

But an awakening came at length. Jonathan Edwards appeared, 
and Whitefield and the disciples of Wesley, all representing in dif- 
ferent degrees the old order, but with it a fervent and entrancing 
conviction of spiritual realities. And ere long the people became so 
awakened that many of them, in the interests of religious truth and 
divine reason, were ready to cast off the old system altogether — 
turning their backs even upon Edwards and Whitefield. Those 
wonderful preachers had indeed produced a " Great Awakening " ; 
but the result of every sharp spiritual aroiasal is, in good time, 
to bring men to a sense of their souls" rights and their personal 
liberties. 

Before many years the American Revolution came, and the polit- 
ical j'oke of England was thrown off. What the Revolution meant 
politically we all know well enough. What it meant religiously 
and theologically is perhaps more important. It meant the divine 
rights of man, civil, spiritual, intellectual — his right to partici- 
pate in his own government — his equal right to think and judge, 
to believe and worship, in his own way, on his own account. It 
meant a tj'rannical parliament and a stupid-souled king discredited 
and banished from power in these colonies ; it equally meant the 
New England minister, who had so perverted his trust as servant 
of the people, and had tvirned self-appointed spiritual despot, 
remanded to his proper place. 

See more specifically what the Revolution implied. Its Decla- 
ration of Independence declared men — all men — to be, not ruined 
creatures, as the creeds said and the clergy had been preaching, — 
not demons of evil who do wrong in preference to right, and sin as 
naturally and almost as inevitably as the sparks fly upward, — but 
beings upright by nature, natural kings and princes under God, fit 
for self-government — mentally and morally competent to help 
rule the land. The Declaration declared by implication that every 
man in his normal state is so in free communion with the soiirce 
of all right and goodness that he is a heaven-appointed ruler of the 
country he lives in, and that no power on earth, in church, or 
state, or anywhere, has a right to govern him against his consent. 
Till that old idea of man's total depravity was denied or put in the 
background there could have been no movement for a liberal gov- 



I^IRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 21 

eminent like ours ; for who could be insane enough to entrust a 
commonwealth or republic to the management of totally depraved 
human beings ? The common run of men did not see the logic of 
all this, but the great leaders saw or felt it. There is now no doubt 
that Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and, with few 
exceptions, every man of that period whose name we presume to 
rank with theirs, were Unitarians in principle, if not in dogma, hold- 
ing the most exalted religious views of man's nature and dignities, 
and believing in salvation by character, and not by creed or sub- 
stitution. I cannot, with mtich searching, find a single utterance 
in the speech or in the letters of any prominent American patriot 
of that time which is keyed to the note of Calvinism. 

Hardly had the Revolution ended, when these religious views of 
man and his high destiny became agitated in nearly all the Congre- 
gational churches of New England. This agitation is now known 
as the Unitarian movement, dating, in its more vigorous state, from 
about the year 1780. It resulted, at length, in the division of the 
great Congregational body of Massachusetts into the Unitarian and 
Trinitarian wings — the liberal party predominating in nearly every 
considerable parish along the sea-board, ruling the College at Cam- 
bridge, and setting the type of religious and intellectual life in 
Massachusetts. 

In this division the church and town of Stow when the issue 
fairl}' came, heartily espoused the liberal side. 

It would be interesting and instructive to read the written agree- 
ment which bound these Stow Christians together at the organiza- 
tion of the church in the very beginning of the eighteenth century. 
But that, as well as the second covenant, is missing. I fear, as I 
just said, that it shared something of the theological rigidness of 
the period. Nearly all the churches suffered from the priestcraft 
of that unhappy epoch. Nor do I undertake to say that the orig- 
inal framers of those early free covenants lived always up to them. 
It was too early in the world's history to expect this. Moreover, 
their life here was so disturbed and imperilled that it would have 
been almost impossible for them to practise unbounded religious 
toleration, and not to ward away, or put in arrest, some persons 
whose existence among them threatened their own religious liber- 
ties, and meant the possible or probable overturning of the fair 
estate they had so well planted in the wilderness. But that they 
had and cherished the ideal of largeness and liberty which is in- 
volved in the various church covenants of the time, and saw it as 



22 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

the high end to be aimed at and striven for, there can be no reason- 
able doubt. Their working by-laws did not always harmonize with 
their organic or theoretic constitution. Their conduct, under diffi- 
culty and danger, not infrequently contradicted their principles. 
Alas ! is not that the way with all of us ? 

Out of that period of its birth and infancy, and the influences 
then dominant, this church, like many another, has had to climb, 
step by step, into larger freedom and sweeter Christian fellowship. 
Its covenant, first in use in 1829, is delightfully broad and Christian, 
and well calculated to band together an entire religious community. 
In 1840 its members voted : " We believe in the divine authenticity 
of the Bible, and agree to live in all respects as God shall therein 
reveal himself." In 1895 this church, in a new manifesto, mounted 
up to that Christian freedom and simplicity which is so perfectly 
expressed in the Plymouth and Salem covenants of 1602 and 1629 : 
" Believing with Jesus that triie religion is summed up in love to 
God and love to man, we of this church, in the faith, freedom and 
fellowship of the Gospel, unite for the worship of God and the ser- 
vice of man." This might well have been written by John Robin- 
son, the Pilgrims' minister. It is pure Congregationalism in its 
native width and largeness, in its ample adaptation to all the relig- 
ious people. May this church, this grand old toAvn-church of Stow, 
always wave such a banner ! 

I have thus far spoken of the New England churches chiefly with 
reference to their popular membership and proceedings. I must 
not neglect to bring before you a little more clearlj^ the part which 
the minister has acted in these old New England towns. In theory, 
and in fact, as I said, the Congregational minister is only one of the 
people, with no superior rights or authority. This is true to the 
letter. Nevertheless, the Congregational minister in our part of 
the world, has had an influence peculiarly his own, from early daj-s 
till now, which, in proportion to his talents, has been greater than 
that of any other member of his community. Especially has it 
been so, and is so still, in the church of a country town, like this 
charming and fair-famed town of vStow. The pastor here has had 
no ritual to ply, no theological system to be continually working 
upon in his pent-up study. He is largely an out-door man. His 
duties and relations are commensurate with the life of the town. 
He is of the people. F'rom the beginning he has been the leader 
and supervisor of the people's education. The schools, piiblic and 
private, have been his peculiar charge. His liberal culture fits him 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 2/5 

intellectually for this function. He knows hooks, and studies 
methods. He is familiar with the parents and the children. Pro- 
fessor Stowe of Andover once wrote: " My experience has taught 
me to despair of establishing, with any permanency, even a good 
district school, where there is not a good church, and an intelligent 
minister to watch over it." Often the minister has taken his turn 
and set the pattern of teaching. Rev. Dr. Bentley of Salem wrote 
in his diary in 1786 : "I altered the time of the school terms. . . . 
After prayer heard the boys read in turn, then sent them to their 
classes and writing-desks. . . . Then mended all the pens." Why 
not? 

In agricultural towns, in earh- times, the pastor was a farmer, 
and sometimes the best one of them all. He was a politician, and 
watched carefully, as he ought, the turn of public affairs. He had, 
as some one said of him long ago, " a good judgment in secular- 
ities." As a rule he could hunt and fish with his hardiest parish- 
ioners. He probably had a larger correspondence with the rest of 
the world by mail than had all his flock combined. He set the 
taste in books, he furnished the pattern of decorum. I must not 
forget to say, that as early as one hundred and fifty years ago, he 
was a good laugher and cheerful story-teller. Up to the early years 
of the nineteenth century, the minister, like all New England gen- 
tlemen, wore a powdered wig and queue. Like his parishioners, 
the country minister of a hundred and fifty years ago was often clad 
in leathern breeches, both during the week and in the pulpit. It 
was a minister, Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, who devised the first 
civil code of Massachusetts. It was a minister, Hugh Peter of 
Salem, who first put this colony into a healthy financial and busi- 
ness condition. It was a minister, Jonathan Newell of Stow, who 
by his invention, gave to the world the great mechanical and com- 
mercial benefit of cut nails. 

At just the period when this church was organized, as we have 
seen, the ministers of the larger or seaport towns, who, like the 
Mathers, father, son, and grandson, had grown big in scholarship 
and spiritual egotism, began to lose something of their unnatural 
and uncougregational prestige. Some of them had got to be little 
popes. But a turn in affairs had come, which was changing them 
back into ministers, that is, servants, of the people. The witch- 
craft matter seems to have been the last pound of the iinendurable 
load. The blind, dumb following of ministers thenceforth began 
to abate. The people were beginning again to use their mental and 



24 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

Spiritual wits. Fortunately for Stow, when John Eveleth was set- 
tled as its first pastor, that official in Massachusetts was soon com- 
ing to be what his title was meant to import — a helper, and not a 
dictator. The elder President Dwight of Yale, writing about the 
year 1800, saj^s : "The real weight of clergymen in Massachusetts 
and Connecticut consists wholly in their influence — an influence 
derived wholh- from their office and their character." 

The all-round character of a minister's vocation in a country 
town — as farmer, writer, educator, counsellor, leader in all manner 
of citizenship, tended to widen, enrich and mellow his nature. He 
was in live touch with all the people, from the babe he had just 
christened to the wrinkled nonagenarian. He had to bear a hand 
in a hundred matters besides sermon-making and studying books. 
He was settled for life and he expected to breathe his last breath 
among his people, and that a modest slab would one day mark his 
bodv's resting-place in the village burying-grouud. The town 
church was for e\ery orderly citizen and his family the social cen- 
ter ; it was the rallying point for all Christian and htimane 
endeavor in common. People who differed never so variously came 
up once a week to shake hands, and to worship together the same 
God with Christian devoutness and good-will. 

Now let us for a moment glance at the world's clock when the 
Congregational church of Stow was organized. It was within a 
year of the founding of Yale College ; it was two years before the 
printing of the first American newspaper ; it was several years 
before the establishing of the first regular post-office on this side 
of the Atlantic. Surely it was a time when the church and its 
educated ministry must needs fill a large and mighty place in the 
people's life. 

At the time this church was gathered, the minister was elected 
by the people, the church members first nominating a candidate 
and handing over their choice for the whole body of voting citizens 
to approve or reject. Sometimes the church named two or more 
candidates from whom the entire assembly of voters made choice 
of the one under whose ministrations they all — both saints and 
sinners — thought they covild most happily or profitably sit. 
Some stringent Christians contended that the final election should 
be made bj' the church-members onl}% but the people resisted that 
claim, and have resisted, and resisted triumphantly, ever since. 
At that time the minister preached his own ordination sermon. 



First parish church, stow, mass. 2o 

sometimes an older clergyman, for his wnsdom's sake, delivering 
another discourse on the same occasion. 

The meeting-house of early days was never lighted for evening 
service ; it was never warmed by artificial heat. The sermon was 
often much more than an hovir in length, rarely less ; the sand-glass 
on the pulpit — for there were few other time-pieces — not infre- 
quently being tiirned more than once during the service, be the 
temperature, outside or inside, never so far below zero. 

The order of worship about the year 1700 was exceediugh- plain 
and of few part?. Until about fifty j^ears later there was no scrip- 
ture-reading, such an exercise seeming to our Puritan ancestors to 
savor of a ritual performance. The almost universal order of wor- 
ship was this : 

First. The Long Prayer. 

Second. The singing of a Psalm from the Old Testament, either 
in the usual version, or in some metrical rendering. What we call 
hymns were unknown in Sunday worship. 

Third. The Sermon. 

Fourth. A vShorter Prayer. 

Fifth. Another Psalm-Singing. 

Sixth. The Benediction : " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with 
you all." 

Often the benediction was prefaced with, " Blessed are they that 
hear the word of God and do it," — said bj' the minister. 

Such was the homely and unadorned style of worship that edi- 
fied and satisfied the people of New England two centuries ago. 

I have thus very imperfectl}^ sketched the main principles and 
some of the practices of the Congregational or people's church, 
with a few hints of later evolutions. 

I wish that I had time to speak to you of some of the ministers 
who have officiated in this Stow church, whom it has been my priv- 
ilege to know, beginning with John Langdon Sibley, including, 
among those who have passed from earth, such excellent pastors 
as Reuben Bates and my dear friend George F. Clark, including, 
also, some of the living whom I greatly esteem, and ending with 
your present minister, who to your great profit has been so long 
with you. May yoiir existing relations continue for years to come ! 

Can any one doubt, even from this hasty consideration, that 
Congregational principles and the Congregational spirit, in their 
natural unfolding, are very broad and liberal, charitaljle and in- 



26 TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 

elusive ? Nor do these priuciples and this spirit shine the less 
brightly, or show themselves the less practicable, because the early 
fathers or their children did not always carry them to their per- 
fect ultimate. 

It should also be clear to us that when the separation came a 
century ago, and the Congregational body was split apart, it was 
the liberal party that, in the matter of unity and tolerance, most 
perfectly adhered to the Congregational ideas. It was the liberal 
wing, whatever its faults and shortcomings — and they were many — 
that restored the largeness and simplicity of the original covenants. 
It was the liberal or Unitarian wing that, in the legal contest for 
the possession of church property, insisted, according to long-time 
precedent, that not a handful, more or less, of church-members 
should control the meeting-house and manage the general funds 
and elect the ministers, but the people of the congregation or par- 
ish in their broad religioiis interests. It was the same wing, as in 
this church of Stow, that in due time abolished all dogmatic tests 
of membership and communion. With all its mistakes and trans- 
gressions the liberal wing committed not this one, namely, to split 
the hitherto peaceful communities into theological and sectarian 
divisions ; but with whatever wisdom and power these liberals had 
they strove to keep the people one and undivided in the dear 
Master's name. 

I need not remind you how, under their mild and tolerant rule, 
theology has mellowed and grown reasonable, how metaphysical 
dogmas, which nobody could clearly Understand, and which bene- 
fited nobody, biit which chiefly served to provoke discord and 
intolerance, have given way to a religion of life and character, 
according to the ttninvolved teachings of Jesus. The so-called 
liberal wing would have no narrow and hateful separation between 
God's children on earth, and for the world to come it would not 
allow eternal happiness for one, and for another everlasting banish- 
ment from the Heavenly Father's presence. Are not those of our 
towns and cities sweeter and wholesomer to live in where the ami- 
able and tolerant tA'pe of Congregational Christianity of which I 
have spoken has simplified and humanized religion and weakened 
the nerve of sectarian rancor ? 

In no part of New England, I believe, did this liberalizing of 
religion work more admirable results than in these old town 
churches of Middlesex and Worcester. In no other section, I 
believe, has the standard of Christian character and experience for 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, STOW, MASS. 27 

the last three generations been more upright, devont, and trul}' 
Christlike than in this particular region. 

What in the history of this church of Stow I honor more than 
almost any other one thing is its patient and earnest endeavor to 
maintain Christian unity, and to ward off dissension and separation 
for human dogmas' wretched sake. In this endeavor it has some- 
times suffered temporary loss of numbers and support. But to 
this day has bravely and magnanimouslj^ stood this old First 
Church, striving and praying to fulfil the Master's prayer, "that 
they all may be one." 

May this church live and prosper and be strong in its uplifting 
and regenerating influence for centuries to come ! Let us believe 
that its work is but fairly begun, since life and truth are large 
beyond measure, and God's days and ages are exceedingly long. 

It was assumed by your fathers and founders that the Protestant 
families of this town, iinless the town should gather too large a 
population, should and ovight to agree to kneel before their God 
together on a broad and simple religious basis, even as they vote 
together, educate their children together, rejoice and mourn 
together, bury their dead together, and live happily and thankfully 
in each other's neighborhood. Can it be that the religion of Jesus 
is narrower and more circumscribed than any other important 
life-interest ? 

This church to-day, with a covenant which all Christians can 
understand and approve, extends its warm and wide-open hand, 
without question of honest theological difference, to every God- 
loving and truth-seeking person within its reach. 

It is a thousand times more important that thus, like the early 
disciples who often wrangled among themselves, but who agreed 
to love the Master together, and worship his God and their God 
together, the people of a community should be one in spirit in spite 
of differences of opinion, one in mutual love, one in bowing before 
God and serving mankind with one heart and voice, than that this 
person or that person should have his particular sectarian name, 
or mode of baptism, or style of prayer-book. 

Let us hope that the day of separation and exclusion for theolog- 
ical opinion's sake is drawing to a happy close. Let the central 
and unquestionable and eternal things actuate us more and more. 
Still does the Heavenly Father watch lovingly over his churches. 
Still is Jesus, in his clear simplicity, the way and truth and 
life. Still is libert}^ the essential condition of true piety, since a 



28 



TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 



soiil ill spiritual fetters caunot worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth. Still does he who leaned on Jesus' bosom whisper to us, 
" Little children, love one another ! " Still does the clarion voice 
of Paul proclaim, as of old, that in Christ there is no heresy but 
intolerance and lack of brotherlj^ love. Heeding these heavenly 
calls and monitions, the future is still bright for the churches of 
God named for his divinest Son. 




JUL 30 1903 



LSSr °^ CONGRESS 



014 079 895 2 



